Ice Capades

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ICE CAPADES - PAGE 4

What do Ice Capades stars do when they get a rare day off from performing? If they`re Kitty and Peter Carruthers, they take the next flight to the world championships in Cincinnati--so that they can watch more skating. For the Carrutherses, last Monday's "travel day" gave them just enough time to revisit the pressurized world of amateur competition, a scene the brother-and-sister team had not experienced since they won a silver medal in pair skating in the 1984 Olympics. Now they are professionals, performing 10 shows a week, 32 weeks a year as headliners of the Ice Capades, which will open a week-long run Tuesday at the Chicago Stadium.

There are many places in the Chicago area where a child can learn to ice skate today: ice arenas, the park district, even backyard rinks. But a few decades ago, ice skating was reserved for the most privileged of people who could afford to pay for ice time at clubs and private lessons. This is why many Chicagoans remember gratefully when Michael J.R. Kirby moved to the area and began offering his services. In the 1950s, Kirby, a Canadian national champion ice skater and member of the touring Ice Follies group, was lured to the Windy City by Sonja Henie, his well-known skating partner, and Arthur Wirtz, who owned the Chicago Stadium, where Henie's ice shows were a local favorite.

By Ellie McGrath. Ellie McGrath, who covered Olympic figure skating for Time magazine, has been a recreational skater for more than 30 years | February 1, 2004

All the Sundays Yet to Come: A Skater's Journey By Kathryn Bertine Little, Brown, 304 pages, $23.95 If you pick up "All the Sundays Yet to Come" expecting to learn much about figure skating, you'll be disappointed. Yes, the author, Kathyrn Bertine, 28, writes about her years as a young skater, putting in two hours of practice every morning before going to school in the affluent New York suburb of Bronxville, where she was regarded as a misfit. But you won't find out much about technique, or even know the difference between a lunge and a lutz at the end. Don't expect any dish on well-known competitors either.

Tweet this Today's panel includes RedEye's Twitter followers from @redeyechicago. For your shot, sign up at twitter.com/redeyechicago. Jimmy Greenfield Tracy Swartz Leo Ebersole Rahula Strohl Tweeta What are the chances the Bulls keep their win streak alive in Houston? 100 percent. Let's just say I know a guy. The streak depends on whether the Bulls cover the Rockets. Better than Rahula's chances at winning a rap battle with Joaquin Phoenix.

Dorothy DiPaolo, a fixture for more than 40 years at the Taylor Street lemonade stand she started with her husband, died on Sunday, Jan. 28, in Rush Medical Center, said her daughter, Donna Jagielski Mrs. DiPaolo, 80, who lived in the building next to Mario's Italian Lemonade, had suffered from pneumonia and heart failure, Jagielski said. Since 1958, Mario's Italian Lemonade has been drawing crowds on hot summer nights with the promise of a refreshing Italian ice. The tiny, open-air stand was built by Mrs. DiPaolo's husband, Mario, with help from his father and some men in the neighborhood, and is open from May 1 to Sept.

Wish juggler Daniel Rosen the best of luck this Friday the 13th. Especially when he tosses those meat cleavers around. Rosen says he missed a catch once and a cleaver "whacked off one guy's ear. I said I was sorry. I guess he didn`t hear me." Relax, it's just a joke. But you would expect that from a guy known as "the comedian's comedian" and "the juggler's juggler." Rosen combines the two forms of entertainment into one very enjoyable and engaging performance. He trades off jokes as easily as he trades meat cleavers for balls, clubs, fiery torches and even a "Swiss army cat."

Postmodern tastes in entertainment have claimed many traditionalist victims. But if there is one live genre that can reasonably claim to have been the most devastated of all by changing cultural mores, it's the ice show. As recently as the early 1980s, there was a hot Chicago market for frozen fare. In a single year, the old Chicago Stadium would house weeklong runs of the Ice Capades, the rival Ice Follies and the winter-themed Holiday On Ice. The rival casts were populated by the finest international stars of skating cheerily working in a variety format.

Already exhausted from illness and the stress of producing her first theater show, "Nutcracker On Ice," Dorothy Hamill didn`t need this. Her scheduler hadn`t told her that a newspaper photographer was coming, and Hamill, wearing no makeup, nixed the photos. Then, in the course of the interview, it emerged that her official biography is wrong: Her residence of Palm Desert, Calif., had been changed to her hometown of Riverside, Conn. "I don`t know how that happened," she said wearily, stifling a yawn.

I recall the winter nights at college in New Hampshire. Often, we`d grab scarves, mittens, sweaters and skates and head to a nearby stand of thick pines surrounding a frozen pond. The air was frigid, but gliding around the ice we worked up enough of a sweat to keep us impervious to the chill. Those evenings passed quickly, as did those winters. That is how I came to enjoy skating. A similar appreciation for the sport can be acquired easily almost everywhere in the country.

One of the underappreciated parts of this record start by the Chicago Blackhawks is the job that Joel Quenneville has done. So underappreciated, in fact, that one list of the top coaching jobs of this shortened NHL season didn't include the guy whose team has gone 16-0-3. Can a guy get a little respect here? This looks like a dream job. Tap players on the shoulder and they proceed to look great, and you never lose a game in regulation. If you're doing it right, yeah, that's the way it looks.